TBC: Happy New Year Supercharging Tip!

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Hey there. Welcome back to the back channel in this new years, 2025 happy new year and happy holidays. I hope you guys had a restful end of the year and are ready to kick off this new year with a bang. Now, some of you are thinking about raising capital right away. It's no surprise that a lot of people put their fundraising activities on pause. That whole Bermuda triangle of Thanksgiving to Christmas and new years. It was a real thing and people are, are back in action, ready to kick things off. Whether or not, you're ready to kick things off and earnest. I think this is a really good time for all of us to be planting seeds. And fertilizing our network for the upcoming business development work that we'll be doing. Favors that we'll be asking or maybe fundraisers that we'll be running.

So what do I mean by this? It is a [00:01:00] piece of advice that I give to a bunch of founders around this time of year. Something that I've done. Pretty regularly over the last few years. And something that I got to just. By happenstance from an old friend of mine. So I was a little bit of a Storytime here. I was in, let's see, in Thailand. And Vietnam. Back in 2019. And, uh, Going to nears there with a few friends. And on new year's day. A friend of mine after a great night. Uh, on a sunny beach was enjoying a cocktail. And on his phone and just typing away, tapping, tapping, tapping away in. And I asked him what he was doing.

And he said he was just sending happy new years notes to friends of his, that he hadn't talked to in awhile. Just wanted to make sure people knew. That he was thinking of them. [00:02:00] And that he appreciated having them in his life. And. I had gotten one of these messages from him in the past and thought about how great it made me feel and thought about how it made me. Remember our connection, even though we hadn't seen each other in a bit. As I thought about, I realized like that's all it really takes to make sure that the people in your life who means something to you that actually could support you in some of your projects are ready to do so when you need them. And so what I've tried to do in most years, Is in that new year season, sometime around January. Where it's not so crazy that people would see this message come out. Is I would prep a message to send to a bunch of people in my network.

People that maybe I hadn't talked to. In years or people that I hadn't talked to in the last year.

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It can be as brief as, Hey, there. Just wanted to say happy new years. I was going through my old context and it's been a while. Hope you're well, As brief was that. But I've seen other people also add on a life, update, some photos. All those things, do a great job of stimulating people in your network to remind them that you exist.

Not even with such commercial or ulterior motives, but just think about, Hey, is, are there things that we should catch up around? If you have an excuse to reach out to your network and re stimulate them, I highly recommend you do so. The second story I'll tell you about is not related to new year's or new year's messages, but instead about the work that we do. With founders trying to help them raise capital. One of [00:05:00] those things is to go super deep. Into your network to find connections to investors and reach out. And ask them if they would be able to make introductions to a few people that we've seen, they are connected to. And every time we do this for founders, we'll do hundreds and hundreds of messages for them. There are tons of those messages where the initial part of the response is. I don't know any of these people. But the really exciting things that come out of that. Are the follow-ups to that part of the message, which is, well, how the hell are you? I don't know any of these people, but how the hell are you? It opens the door to reconnection.

It opens it or to finding out what these people are doing in their lives. And it opens the door to potential ways to help each other. So, and this new years, I'd highly recommend you find a reason to go through your whole network. Right down the people that you think are interesting, your [00:06:00] network and find an excuse to say hi. It could be just happy new years.

How are you doing. And it could be more detailed update. All right. Thanks for joining me for this happy new years episode of the back channel. And we'll see you next time.

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